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Chapter 24: Eastern Psychology: The Science of the Soul

He said, “Who says that dead people don’t go for a morning walk? Every day I meet many dead people going for a morning walk.”

The family was very much puzzled - what to do with the man?

When they found it impossible to convince him - because he wouldn’t go to the shop. His argument was clear: “Dead people don’t run businesses. I have never come across a single dead man. If you can convince me by bringing a dead man who runs a business, I will go to the shop. I will do only things which dead people are supposed to do - nothing else.”

They told the psychoanalyst the whole story: “This man is in a poor state.”

The psychologist said, “Don’t be worried, I will fix him.”

He took a needle and asked this madman: “What do you think about the proverb that ‘Dead people don’t bleed’?”

He said, “It is absolutely right. I heard it when I was alive: ‘Dead people don’t bleed.’”

The psychologist was very happy. The family was very happy also, listening, thinking that the psychologist is really great; he is catching him on the first point.

The psychologist pushed the needle into the dead man’s hand and blood came out. He looked at the dead man and said, “What do you say now?”

The man said, “That means that proverb is wrong - dead people do bleed. I had only heard it; now it is my own experience.”

If you come across such people the whole day long, in the night you will dream of the same people. Naturally, psychologists don’t live a very sane life. And they cannot live a sane life until and unless they accept that there is something beyond the mind. The beyond is the rest, the shelter. The mind is a continuous chattering, it is twenty-four hours chattering. Only beyond the mind is peace and silence. In that peace and silence sanity is born.

Enlightenment is the ultimate peak of sanity: when one becomes perfectly sane, has come to a point where silence, serenity, consciousness are twenty-four hours his, waking or sleeping. There runs a current of tranquility, blissfulness, benediction, which is nourishment, food from the beyond.

Eastern psychology accepts the mind as the lowest part of human consciousness - dismal and dark. You have to go beyond it. And enlightenment is not the end, because it is only individual consciousness. Individuality is still like two banks of a river. The moment the river moves into the ocean, all banks disappear, all boundaries are annihilated. You have gone beyond enlightenment.